The Lost Shores Update
Something is stirring in the Sea of Sorrows. Ship wreckage is washing up on shore, whales are beaching themselves, local quaggans are leaving their undersea homes, and strange new creatures are being spotted along the Tyrian coast.

Head Researcher Levvi has been pleading with Captain Magnus, leader of the Lionguard, to heed her warnings of imminent danger to the city of Lion’s Arch and other coastal settlements. Magnus remains unconvinced, though the disruption of maritime trade has the Ship’s Council concerned.

Something new is coming ashore in Lion’s Arch at 12:00 p.m. Pacific Time on Friday, November 16. This epic event will change that city forever, even as it introduces an entirely new twist on dungeon play. Come to the defense of Lion’s Arch and race to discover the secret behind a mysterious new menace.

At 12:00 p.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, November 17, the second phase of this epic adventure will take players to a place they’ve never been in Tyria, where they’ll meet a new pet creature and discover previously unknown crafting resources that unlock new recipes and a unique way to upgrade gear.

Join us at 12:00 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday, November 18 for your chance to take part in an unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime final event!

DungeonsGeneral

New dungeon rewards have been added to all dungeons.

Each dungeon has a new set of unique items with new stat combinations, ranging in rarity from masterwork to exotic. These items have a chance to drop off of certain bosses in the explorable mode of each dungeon.

Story and explorable bosses and encounters have a chance to drop Bags of Wondrous Goods, which contain coins and karma. Bags of Wondrous Goods obtained in explorable mode also contain dungeon tokens.

If the owner of a dungeon instance intentionally leaves his party to kick out players and invite new players, it will now also kick that owner out of the dungeon to prevent people from kicking PUG members and inviting guild members for the final boss of a dungeon.

Fractals of the Mists
There are new stories being told in the taverns of Lion’s Arch, usually in hushed tones by broken and bloodied adventurers. They weep into their ales and shake as they speak…not about dragons or the undead, but of something new, a mysterious portal that has emerged in the city, beckoning the bravest to venture through it.
Introducing a dungeon experience like no other—Fractals of the Mists! A series of unique “fractal” minidungeons, increasing in difficulty, offers players unlimited levels of challenge! With great risk comes great rewards, including new weapon sets, a back slot item, new Ascended loot, and much more!

New level 80 dungeon with dynamic leveling so you can bring your friends!

Endless and scaling. The deeper you go, the harder it gets!

The portal to the Fractals of the Mists will activate with the Lost Shores content Friday at 12:30 p.m. Pacific Time. Head west of Fort Marriner to the entrance and try your luck. Perhaps you’ll survive and reap the rewards, or perhaps you’ll be lost forever to the Fractals’ bloody secrets.

Items
There are two new major features added to items in this update. For more detailed information on these features and how they tie into the new Lost Shores content, check out this blog post!

Added new crafting materials as part of the Lost Shores update.

Crafted Halloween potions are no longer account bound.

The mighty Zommoros has slightly increased the drop rate on Legendary precursor weapons from the Mystic Forge from both Rares and Exotics.

The drop rarity of Rare and Exotic weapons from certain places in the world (champions, veterans, and players in WvW) has been increased. Rares and Exotics should be much more likely to drop and every champion should be guaranteed to drop loot. This was to ensure that world loot drops were not a significantly worse way of acquiring rare and exotic items than crafting and running dungeons.

The amount of loot that drops for downscaled players has been increased. You should now be able to receive level-equivalent loot until you are fighting at a downscaled level that is less than 2/3 of your actual level. You should also receive loot a greater percentage of the time as well as receiving a greater percentage of experience, gold, and karma. For level 80 characters, this means level 55+ areas will be able to drop level 80 gear and give about 75% or so of the other rewards. Previously, these areas would give level 77 gear at best and closer to 60% or so of your rewards.

New Rarity Type: Ascended

Ascended rarity falls between Exotics and Legendaries on the rarity spectrum.

Ascended items have higher stats than Exotics and come with slots for the new upgrade type, Infusions.

Ascended rings and back slot items have been added to the game.

New Upgrade Type: Infusion

Infusions are a new type of upgrade component that can only be slotted into a matching Infusion slot.

Added 12 new Infusions of the offensive, defensive, and omni types to the game.

Create Infusions through the Mystic Forge using new crafting materials.

PvP

Paid tournament rewards have been improved. We’ve spread out the rewards for paid tournaments, so that more finishing positions receive rewards. We’ve also made it so that qualifying points are rewarded to the following finishing positions:

Raid on the Capricorn: Reduced the number of sharks from 10 to 6. They should no longer cover the Ruins capture point.

PvP downed health is now 75% of what it was. This change was made so that in fights where players are slightly outnumbered, they can win those fights by killing off downed enemies through damage rather than needing to use a finishing move. This should not have too much impact on 1v1 fights or big team fights, but it should help players win 1v2 and 2v3 fights if they gain the initial advantage.

The hit area for the trebuchet in the Battle of Kyhlo has been updated to prevent players from dropping massive AoE attacks (e.g. Meteor Shower) and having every single attack hit the trebuchet, destroying it without any counter. All normal attacks should still work against it.

General

The Fire Elemental encounter in Metrica Province has received a balance pass.

The Shatterer encounter in Blazeridge Steppes has been updated.

A UI confirmation window will now pop up on large vendor purchases.

Players will now be warned if they do not have enough inventory space to acquire an elemental fragment during the Dierdre’s Steps jumping puzzle.

Harvesting tools are now account bound.

Updated Rune of Water to provide 10% boon duration instead of 15% in PvP.

Updated Rune of the Monk to provide 10% boon duration instead of 15% in PvP.

Updated Rune of Earth to provide 15% protection duration instead of 20%, and 3 seconds of protection instead of 4 seconds in PvP.

Updated Rune of the Citadel to properly grant power instead of healing.

Rune of Svanir’s block of ice effect will no longer allow players to capture points while they’re invulnerable. Removing the stun from this effect will remove the invulnerability as well.

Rune of Air’s lightningdamage has been reduced by 25%.

“Unblockable” skill facts have now been added to various skills.

Rune of the Pack’s on-hit effect now works properly.

Many skills, items, and traits were applying healing to an infinite amount of targets and have now been limited to 5 targets.

You can no longer view opponents’ account names through reporting in WvW.

Fixed a bug that caused many piercing, boomerang, and bouncing projectiles (those that hit more than 1 target) to continually increase in damage the mokittengets they hit.

Fixed a bug preventing melee attacks from hitting static objects in the world if the character was not moving. As an example, this should help players using melee in Ascalonian Catacombs to hit graveling burrows, amongst other offending objects.

Commerce

The Consortium Chest has been added to the gem store in the Consumable category for 250 gems each or 10 for 1800 gems. No key is required to open these chests; simply double-click them in your inventory.

When you open the Consortium Chest, you will receive some number of crafting materials and one random item.

Signets of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water: These skills should now have a cast animation while wielding a Fiery Greatsword.

Ring of Fire: This skill on Conjure Flame now lists itself as a Fire combo field.

Dragon’s Tooth: The blast finisher for this skill now triggers at the spell location rather than the character’s location.

Magnetic Wave: This skill’s missile-reflect portion now has an accompanying icon.

Phoenix: This skill’s tooltip now states the correct duration of 5 seconds of vigor that this skill applies.

Blasting Staff and Geomancer’s Alacrity: These traits now work together for the Eruption skill.

Mist Form: This skill now works with the Water Magic trait Cantrip Mastery.

Soothing Wave: This skill now properly applies regeneration to the elementalist when using Conjure Frost rather than only when the bow is picked up.

Healing Ripple: This skill’s scaling with healing power has been reduced by 50% in PvP only, as it had scaling that’s normally reserved for main healing skills. The maximum number of targets has also been reduced from infinite to 5.

Elixir S: This skill is now improved by the Alchemy trait Fast-Acting Elixirs.

Tool Kit

Box of Nails: This skill now shows its proper area of effect.

Gear Shield: This skill now blocks for an extra second.

Magnet: This skill’s range has been doubled.

Grenades

The projectile speed of all grenades has been increased by 10-15%.

Grenade: This skill’s damage has been decreased by 10% in PvP only.

Shrapnel Grenade: This skill’s damage has been decreased by 15% in PvP only.

Freeze Grenade: This skill’s damage has been decreased by 10% in PvP only.

Grenade Barrage: This skill’s damage has been decreased by 10% in PvP only. It also now works correctly with the Explosives trait Grenadier while underwater.

Turrets

Smoke Screen: This skill’s graphic has been updated to show the area of the screen. It now pulses every 2 seconds for 6 seconds instead of every second for 5 seconds. This makes it more effective against enemies using attacks at normal speeds but prevents it from being abused to shut down quick-attacking enemies completely.

Automatic Fire: Increased the duration of this skill’s Overcharge by 100% on Harpoon Turret and 25% on Rifle Turret.

Electrified Net: Increased the velocity of the Electrified Net by 100%.

Thump: Increased the damage of the Overcharged attack by 25%.

Bomb Kit, Med Kit, Tool Kit, and Elixir Gun: These skills can now be equipped in the air.

All kits can be stowed in the air now.

Toss Elixir C: This skill’s cooldown will be set from 60 seconds to 30 seconds when underwater.

Elixir Gun’s Fumigate: This skill will now be cancelled when using other skills on the weapon to improve responsiveness.

Rocket Turret: This turret can now be detonated underwater.

Power Wrench: This trait now applies to Gear Shield and Magnet.

Incendiary Powder: This trait now states that it can only trigger once every 3 seconds.

Elixir U and Elixir C: These skills have had outdated skill facts removed.

Selfless Daring: This trait had an efficiency with healing power that was reserved for healing skills only and has now been reduced to its intended level. Heal scaling has been reduced by 50% in PvP only.

Merciful Intervention: This skill has been updated to be instant when traited and will now always be based around the guardian.

Mesmer

Moa Morph: Targets transformed by this skill have 5 new and less-frustrating skills, and this skill can also be used underwater to turn enemies into tuna. This skill now removes Death Shroud from the target instead of the necromancer being stuck in Death Shroud.

Portal: This skill’s recharge has been increased to 90 seconds.

Illusionary Duelist, Phantasmal Swordsman, Phantasmal Mage, Phantasmal Defender, Phantasmal Disenchanter, Phantasmal Rogue, Phantasmal Warlock, Illusionary Mariner, Illusionary Whaler, Phantasmal Berserker, and Phantasmal Warden: These skills must now be cast in line-of-sight of the target. These skills now behave as normal attacks that the mesmer must connect in order to summon the phantasm, and they will fail if the mesmer is blind or the ability is cast on an invulnerable target.

Phantasmal Mage: This skill’s confusion has been increased to 3 stacks for 3 seconds from 1 stack for 9 seconds. The recharge on Phantasmal Mage’s skill has been increased to 6 seconds from 5 seconds.

The Prestige: This skill’s damage has been increased by 100%.

Phantasmal Haste: This trait now works.

Necromancer

The Soul Reaping trait line now properly increases maximum Life Force.

Ghastly Claws: This skill’s damage has been increased by 10% and updated to indicate the correct life force gained.

Mark of Blood: This skill now uses the standard staff scythe cast effects.

Spectral Wall: This skill now applies its recharge at the correct time instead of both during and after casting.

Dark Path: This skill now applies it recharge at the correct time instead of both during and after casting.

Spinal Shivers: This skill’s casting effects and audio are now consistent with or without the Spiteful Talisman trait.

Soul Marks and Mark of Revival: These traits now work together to grant 3% life force to players when triggered.

Death Nova: This skill now properly activates when using Taste of Death and Putrid Explosion. The internal cooldown has been removed. This skill’s field duration is now 4 seconds, and the rate it pulses has been increased to every 2 seconds. Its poison duration is 5 seconds per pulse.

Weakening Shroud: This trait now functions underwater.

Mark of Evasion: This trait is no longer a blast finisher when the mark is created.

Plague Blast: This skill’s casting time has been reduced.

Death Shroud: Moa Morph now removes Death Shroud from the target instead of the necromancer being stuck in Death Shroud and using their entire bar while in the transform.

Deadly Catch: This skill now pulls enemies to the necromancer in a reliable fashion.

Summon Blood Fiend: The Blood Fiend’s survivability has been increased, and its attack now heals the necromancer for 200% of its previous heal.

Spectral Walk: This skill now sets its underwater slot appropriately on recharge.

Corrosive Poison Cloud: This skill’s duration tooltip has been corrected.

Frozen Abyss: This skill now lists the vulnerability it applies.

Spectral Grasp: This skill’s projectile velocity has been increased by 33%.

Lich Form: Leaving this skill now removes stability from the player to make the removal consistent with all other transform elites.

Feast: This skill no longer causes damage to the necromancer.

Sinking Tomb: This skill now has a correct range of 1200, cannot hit targets above the water, and has to hit the target to cause the sink effect.

Vampiric Precision, Vampiric Rituals, and Vampiric: These traits have been updated so that they don’t heal enemies when in lower-level areas.

Signet of Spite: This skill’s description now indicates all conditions applied.

Ranger

Improved the effect chance on ranger spirits to 35% base and 50% when traited.

Beastmastery minor traits now use the correct icon.

Splinter Shot: This skill’s damage is increased by 150%, and its bleeding duration is increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds.

Counterattack: The blocking portion of this skill can now be used while moving. Ranged attacks will not trigger the second half of the skill.

Protecting Screech: This skill now states the correct duration of 4 seconds.

Call of the Wild: The Wilderness Survival trait Off-Hand Training now applies to this skill.

Throw Torch: The speed of the projectile has been increased.

Maul: This skill’s damage has been increased by 40%.

Sun Spirit: The tooltip for this skill now displays the proper burning time of 3 seconds.

Whirling Defense: This skill was updated so that it interacts better with combo fields.

Splinter Shot: This skill is now a small projectile combo finisher.

Coral Shot: This skill is now a projectile combo finisher.

Feeding Frenzy: This skill is now a projectile combo finisher.

Mercy Shot: This skill is now a projectile combo finisher.

Thief

Piercing Shot: Fixed an error in this skill’s damage tooltip.

Dancing Dagger: This skill’s damage has been reduced by 50%.

Blinding Powder: This skill’s recharge has been reduced from 60 seconds to 40 seconds.

Smoke Screen: This skill’s height has been increased to help it absorb projectiles.

Shadowstep: This skill is temporarily disabled underwater to keep players from circumventing walls when using it.

Tactical Strike: This skill’s damage has been increased by 10% in all formats. This skill’s daze duration has been reduced from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds in PvP.

Leeching Venoms: This trait now scales based on the thief’s power.

Cluster Shot: This skill’s damage is reduced by 15% in PvP.

Cloak and Dagger: This skill’s damage has been reduced by 33% in PvP only.

Body Shot: This skill now allows players to activate other skills sooner after the ability ends.

Sneak Attack: This skill will now only apply the Revealed buff on the first attack that hits an opponent.

Stab: Damage for this skill has been normalized so that it doesn’t deal less damage from behind the target.

Bountiful Theft: This trait no longer applies aegis at odd times.

Scorpion Wire: This skill’s range has been increased to 1200.

Shadow Trap: This skill no longer shadowsteps the thief when the trap is triggered. This skill now has two additional abilities: The first ability becomes available when Shadow Trap is cast and will destroy the current trap. The second ability, Shadow Pursuit, becomes available when an enemy triggers the trap. The thief may choose to activate this ability and shadowstep to the enemy that triggered the trap. If this ability is not activated after 10 seconds, the ability will fade and Shadow Trap will be available.

Piercing Shot: This skill is now a small projectile combo finisher.

Ink Shot: This skill is now a projectile combo finisher.

Warrior

Dual Shot: This skill’s damage has been increased by 10%.

Bull’s Charge: This skill’s range fact now properly reflects the actual range of the skill.

Reviver’s Might: This trait now uses the correct icon.

Stick and Move: This trait now uses the correct icon.

Forceful Shot: This skill is now a projectile combo finisher.

Brutal Shot: This skill is now a projectile combo finisher.

Split Shot: This skill is now a small projectile combo finisher.

Knot Shot: This skill is now a projectile combo finisher.

Repeating Shot: This skill is now a small projectile combo finisher.

Triple Chop: This skill’s responsiveness has been improved.

Racial AbilitiesHuman

Avatar of Melandru: This skill now properly removes stability when players leave the transformation.

Sylvari

Grasping Vines: This skill now immobilizes enemies when the vines connect with the enemy.

The amount of loot that drops for downscaled players has been increased. You should now be able to receive level-equivalent loot until you are fighting at a downscaled level that is less than 2/3 of your actual level. You should also receive loot a greater percentage of the time as well as receiving a greater percentage of experience, gold, and karma

Thank the Six. I've been playing under downscaling by several levels on all my alts.

Quote

The Fire Elemental encounter in Metrica Province has received a balance pass.

Players who killed this thing and other world bosses before they received 'balance passes' should be given a title or something

One of the Engineer's only viable builds got nerfed, with a few minor bug fixes...
Sure, nerf one of the least played professions, cause everyone was QQ'ing about how OP Engineers were, right...?
They ignore the import bugs, like no weapon stats/sigil when you equip a kit, which puts us at a severe disadvantage...

Oh yeah, about the Thieves ; Nerf DD and S/D means that more thieves are just gonna run D/D which received about a 10% damage nerf in total. More Heartseeker and Death Blossom spam I guess. Yeah lets not promote build variety? Back to Build Wars 2/ Backstab Wars 2?

Spears, on 15 November 2012 - 11:30 PM, said:

One of the Engineer's only viable builds got nerfed, with a few minor bug fixes...
Sure, nerf one of the least played professions, cause everyone was QQ'ing about how OP Engineers were, right...?
They ignore the import bugs, like no weapon stats/sigil when you equip a kit, which puts us at a severe disadvantage...

Very disappointed in this patch for Engineers...

About the kits. They gave the elementalists conjure weapons stats, why couldnt they give the weapons kits stats too?

Still no ranger pet fixes.
Nerf the only viable engineer build without buffing the others considerably and still no weapon stats counting.
Nerf to some thief stuff that makes people go into heartseeker and death blossom spam more.
Lots of grind to get the new highest tier or items (stat wise), thanks ALOT

Looks good... and it sounds like they learned from the halloween event as to how to deal with weapon skins by making them drops during the event as well. Good to see a bunch of updates especially the loot in dungeons. Sounds like the best update so far.

Oh yeah, about the Thieves ; Nerf DD and S/D means that more thieves are just gonna run D/D which received about a 10% damage nerf in total. More Heartseeker and Death Blossom spam I guess. Yeah lets not promote build variety? Back to Build Wars 2/ Backstab Wars 2?

About the kits. They gave the elementalists conjure weapons stats, why couldnt they give the weapons kits stats too?

We have stats on our kits, but we lose sigils and a lot of our weapon's stats. I do around 1-2k less damage with my Grenade Barrage if I am on Grenade Kit, then when I would've used it with Rifle...

I will admit they got me. I was expecting some actual fixes, instead...we got that.

Sure they didn't nerf backstab, they simply nerfed S/D thief. Just made a problem even worse, by insuring more thieves go backstab. Was hoping to have more viable builds, not to lower the amount of viable builds by one. On the other hand my warrior is even sexier.

So.... This:
"Flame Axe: This weapon now grants the wielder power and condition damage.
Frost Bow: This weapon now grants the wielder increased condition duration and increased healing power.
Fiery Greatsword: This weapon now grants the wielder power and condition damage.
Magnetic Shield: This weapon now grants the wielder vitality and toughness.
Lightning Hammer: This weapon now grants the wielder increased precision and critical damage."

But nothing of the same for Engineers? Plus a nerf to grenades? I always thought there were technical limitations or something to giving us a compensation for our weapons stats while using a kit, now there obviously isn't. hmmmm.

Also, where are all the ranger changes that were promised to make utilities more interesting? Not trying to QQ or nitpick, but you kind of dropped the explicitly stated ball here Arenanet

So.... This:
"Flame Axe: This weapon now grants the wielder power and condition damage.
Frost Bow: This weapon now grants the wielder increased condition duration and increased healing power.
Fiery Greatsword: This weapon now grants the wielder power and condition damage.
Magnetic Shield: This weapon now grants the wielder vitality and toughness.
Lightning Hammer: This weapon now grants the wielder increased precision and critical damage."

But nothing of the same for Engineers? Plus a nerf to grenades? I always thought there were technical limitations or something to giving us a compensation for our weapons stats while using a kit, now there obviously isn't. hmmmm.

Also, where are all the ranger changes that were promised to make utilities more interesting? Not trying to QQ or nitpick, but you kind of dropped the explicitly stated ball here Arenanet

It's only when you are wielding the weapon and it only has X charges and lasts Y seconds, while the Engineer kits stay on for as long as you want.